Letters to the Editor for March 16, 2011

NoneMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 3:00 pm, Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Americans need to be aware of surroundings

As Congressman Peter King, R-NY, opened his committee hearings into domestic Islamic extremist terror threats (there is such a thing), Democrats and their ilk predictably fell into a neurotic ideological meltdown with screeds about "McCarthyism" and "profiling." Give me a break! Everybody "profiles."

When you walk into a room full of people you are automatically judged ("too fat," "too old," "cute sweater," "nice ..."); you get the picture. As an exercise in reality, when was the last time you picked up a hitchhiker? Liberal talk show commentator Juan Williams was canned at NPR (National Putrid Radio) for saying he was apprehensive when boarding a plane with passengers "wearing Muslim garb." He now works for Fox News. So do these threats exist? As poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, "Let me count the ways."

Former head of the CIA bin Laden Issues Station, Michael Scheurer, has a current book out entitled "Osama bin Laden" in which he details everything that eventually will come out of the congressional hearings. Bin Laden and al-Qaida know that even with the bungling TSA manning the airports, another 9/11-style attack is impossible, so they rely on inciting others already here to continue their campaign of killing as many Americans as possible anywhere they are found. (They have co-conspirators at work in many other places as well.) Witness the Fort Hood shooter, the incompetent Times Square bomber, the Portland Christmas plot and others. Members of the Muslim community have been told by their religious leaders not to cooperate with law enforcement in any way. You know, just like the Mafia omerta: or code of silence. What a example to pattern your conduct after. Right?

As Dorothy (Judy Garland) said in "The Wizard of Oz," "Toto, this isn't Kansas" and this is not same America most of us grew up in. Every private citizen needs to develop a healthy awareness of this. There is an old saying about "know your 360" or be cognizant of things around you. The way the Times Square plot was short-circuited was a street vendor becoming suspicious of the explosives-laden SUV left by the perpetrator and notifying the police.